


Ashes and Embers

by Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, fairytale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: Fairytale AU.Because who doesn't need a little true love?This fic is fully written. I'll be posting a chapter a day for four days until it's all up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you want complex plot and thoughtful social commentary, this is not the fic for you (try [Tower Rats](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10909665/chapters/24257538)).
> 
> If you want a cheesy fairytale AU wherein Alex is sort-of-but-not-really-Cinderella, Maggie is sort-of-but-not-really-also-Cinderella-crossed-with-a-fairy-godmother, James Olsen is the nobility we all know him to be, and Gertrude is a horse sidekick, read on.
> 
> Because I figure we could all use something light and happy right now, eh?

Maggie dresses in trousers and boots and her thick oilskin apron, and then crouches down before her fireplace. The first omen of the day is a good one: in the back corner, pushing through the ash like sun through clouds, an ember glows gently. She reaches for the ash-shovel and, as with a quick flick of the wrist, tips the coal up and into its crook, sending up a puff of ash that settles over the layer of fire-dust that already covers the hearth. Carefully she walks the ember out the door of her house and into the smithy directly adjacent, holding a hand in front of the shovel to protect it from the wind, and tips it into her forge. She lays a handful of straw over it and blows gently, the ember glowing brighter, pushing its heat out until the straw begins to smoke and then flares up. She lays the kindling carefully overtop now, and when that begins to burn, adds a log, bark side to the flame. At the side of the forge she’s mounted her bellows - it’s easier, this way, since she has no apprentice to work it for her - so she dashes quickly to its handles to begin working them, strokes slow and firm, until the satisfying crackle and the scent of spruce tell her the fire is fully alive. 

While the flame seasons, she tops up the quenching barrel with well water and then puts more water in a pan to cook morning gruel over the forge fire. It spares her the trouble of having to build another fire in her hearth; it earns her strange looks from the neighbors, too, but she pays them no mind. 

She’s long been accustomed to the neighbors’ strange looks.

Once the forge is hot and her belly is full, there’s nothing to do but wait and hope for customers.

 

\--

 

Her first of the day comes early. Maggie hopes that’s a good sign.

“Scythe blade cracked,” the man says. “Hell of a time for it, too, with the early hay harvest coming in. I usually go to Harper down the way, but he’s taken ill, so ‘s wife says. You sure you can handle that blade, girl? It’s a heavy one.”

Maggie hums, and resists an impulse to reply snidely as she taps the blade free of its handle and uses her tongs to heat it in the forge. If she fixes the blade well, maybe this man will come back and bring her more business, so it won’t benefit her to be rude. 

Harper’s ill, so the day will be full of business and opportunities.

There’s probably some sin in being grateful for a working man’s illness, but the church gave up on Maggie’s mortal soul some time ago, so it hardly matters.

She can tell the blade was quickly and improperly made, the metal improperly tempered and not kept hot enough as it was hammered, creating spots of weakness that can chip and crack. She heats it and hammers it, heats it and hammers it until she’s satisfied with the repair, then cools it in the water barrel and gives it a few passes with her file to sharpen the edge.

The farmer looks closely at it. “I’m sure that’ll hold up, ‘least until I can get Harper to work it again,” he says. “How much?”

“Threepenny,” says Maggie. She knows that’s what Harper charges for this much labor.

“Oh, that’s hardly threepenny’s work,” says the farmer, “and it’s not like you’ve got a family to feed. I’ll give you halfpenny.”

They haggle. Maggie takes a penny and a half.

But that customer’s unimportant. It’s the second customer -- a woman leading a limping chestnut Clydesdale -- who’s the one who’ll change her life.

She’s taller than Maggie, but not  _ tall _ . Striking, and beautiful, but not  _ pretty _ . Her hands are weathered, her eyes tired, and she wears heavy work-trousers not unlike the ones Maggie, herself, is wearing beneath her oilskin apron. 

“I’m looking for the smith Sawyer,” the woman says, eyes glancing from Maggie to the space behind her, searching for someone else in the darkness.

“You’ve found her,” Maggie says, holding her hands out and open in display.

The woman blinks, reaching one hand up to stroke the horse’s neck nervously. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I thought you were--”

“A man?” Maggie fills in.

The woman laughs a little. “A boy, actually. I knew Sawyer was a woman,  _ everyone _ knows the smith Sawyer is a woman, but I didn’t expect--” she gestures vaguely at Maggie’s body, incorporating, Maggie knows, her working clothing, her muscled and ashen forearms, the lack of curves at her hips and waist, the hair tied back from her face but hanging down her back. “I thought you must be her apprentice or something. Which,” she gestures vaguely at her own body, her own workman’s boots and dirty hands and hair cut short to her chin, “is a stupid assumption for me to have made.”

When Maggie smiles, it feels full and genuine and not at all like the curve she forces into her lips to appease her customers most of the time.

“I’ve had worse assumptions made about me,” she says. She gestures toward the horse’s cocked foot. “I’m guessing you’re here for a horseshoe.”

The woman sighs. “She lost it in the mud somewhere. I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere.”

Maggie hums and smiles again. “Well, fortunately, I’ve got a few horseshoes lying around. Do you mind holding her while I have a look? I don’t have an apprentice.”

The woman doesn’t mind. Maggie notices that she holds the horse’s head gently, so that she offers no resistance when Maggie asks her to lift the offending hoof onto her stand.

It doesn’t take long to find a blank shoe of an approximate fit. She heats it, shapes it on her anvil, heats it and shapes it again until it fits the hoof perfectly, but in between the clanging of her hammer and the hissing of the hot iron in the quenching barrel, Maggie hazards a glance over at the woman, as surreptitiously as she can manage. The woman strokes the horse’s blaze, from forehead to muzzle, and the horse lowers her head with each touch, leaning into its calm.

“All done,” Maggie says into the echo of the last ring of the hammer. She sets the hoof back on the floor. The mare stomps once, twice, as though surprised by the weight of the shoe, and then settles comfortably to stand.

“You’re incredible,” the woman says, as Maggie makes her way to the horse’s head. “What’s the price?”

Maggie thinks of the woman’s kind, soft touch for her animal, and the unaccountable warmth it pulled from her chest.

“Keep your coin,” she says. 

The woman looks up from the coin purse she’s pulled from a saddlebag. “I don’t want your charity,” she snaps, and then looks ashamed, as though she hadn’t meant to speak in that tone.

“It’s not charity,” Maggie says carefully. “It’s… an investment. In you as a customer. Keep your money, so long as you promise to come to me again the next time you need a blacksmith.”

The woman eyes her, head cocked, eyes narrowed, appraising. And then she smiles. “Shrewd,” she laughs. “All right.” 

In the street, the blacksmith helps the woman into her saddle, taking notice but no notion of the cracks in the leather and the fraying in the stitching.

“Do you mind if I ask you your name?” Maggie asks.

The woman stares down at her for a moment and then shakes her head, bemused. “You’re a strange woman, blacksmith Sawyer. I’m Alex Danvers.”

Danvers. Maggie has heard of the Danvers name - a landowner, not far outside of town.

She smiles. “Maggie Sawyer. And it is a pleasure to meet you, Alex Danvers.”

Maggie watches Alex Danvers ride away until she disappears over the crest of the hill.

It may be the mid-morning sunlight, and the way it draws the eye. Or it may be the fact that Maggie can’t help but notice her differently, as the daughter of a landowner. 

She notices the uneven wear of the heels of her shoes, the pull of the fabric of her shirt where holes have been stitched, the old mare’s sway back and the thinness of her tail. She remembers the threadbare coin purse, and how light of coin it seemed to be.

She notices all this, wonders how the daughter of a landowner, kind and beautiful and well into marriageable age, could wind up wearing the clothes of a servant and bringing an old workhorse in for a new shoe.

 

\--

 

True to her word, Alex Danvers is back two weeks later with a broken plough-blade and a gelding needing new shoes.

She smiles at Maggie like an old friend as she steps down from the gig and begins to unbuckle the horse’s harness from the shafts. “As promised, blacksmith Sawyer,” she says, “And I need four horseshoes this time, not just one.” 

Maggie laughs: “See? I knew my investment would pay off, Miss Danvers!”

“Alex,” Miss Danvers says, a hint of something inscrutable in her voice. “Please, just call me Alex.”

Miss Danvers -  _ Alex _  - sets the shafts of her gig carefully on the ground and the gelding stands patiently, huffing a soft breath until she comes to his head and leads him into the smithy. Maggie can see the toes of his hooves hooves long and spread, the sharp angle from his heel to the ground, and the overworn shoes beneath it.

“I know he’s overdue for the farrier.” 

Maggie’s eyes shoot up to see Alex looking at her from overtop of the horse’s muzzle, her palm resting on the pink flesh of his nose, her smile faltering, turning inward. Maggie is embarrassed to have been caught staring, as she had been, in judgment.

“I know that’s why he’s not as sound as I’d like him to be, these days,” Alex apologizes.

“Never mind,” Maggie says, with a smile. “I have a rasp and I’ve worked with a farrier or two before. This is a little more involved than it was with Gertrude, but I can probably clean him up before we put the shoes back on.”

“Oh, blacksmith Sawyer, I- I haven’t got-”

“Maggie,” Maggie interrupts. “If we’re using given names, it has to go both ways.”

Alex’s mouth works, fish-like. “ _ Maggie _ ,” she concedes, “but still, I couldn’t ask you to-”

“I’m offering,” Maggie says, “It’s really no trouble.” She ends the argument by bending to lift the horse’s foot onto her stand.

They speak idly. Alex works her father’s land, Maggie learns. “The strawberries are coming in,” she says. “We sell them to the court, for their preserves, but I steal one or two at every harvest, just to eat. Have you ever had one?”

“When I was a child,” Maggie says. “They grew near my father’s home, in the wild. They were delicious.”

When the horse is shod and the plough-blade fixed, Alex pulls her coin purse from her gig and says, eyebrow cocked pointedly, “How much?”

“Fourpenny,” Maggie replies.

“Fourpenny,” Alex echoes, dubious.

Maggie nods.

“Mr. Harper would charge at least a half-shilling for the shoes alone,” Alex says.

“Mr. Harper would,” Maggie agrees.

Alex’s eyes narrow. “If you’re giving me charity, Maggie, I don’t want it.”

Maggie sees a familiar defiance in Alex’s glare, simultaneously a call to judgment and rebuttal of it. “Of course I’m not giving you charity.”

“Then take this!” Alex says firmly and holds out her hand, two threepenny coins nestled in her palm.

Maggie shakes her head. “Only if you’ll take tuppence in return.”

“Sawyer-”

“I enjoy your company,” Maggie says, in a rush.

Alex’s eyebrows raise slightly, and she tilts her head, waiting.

Maggie takes a breath and wipes her sweaty forehead with the back of a sooty hand. “You laugh with me,” she sighs. “Most women close to my age avoid me. I think I scare them. The men - they work with me if they have to, if Harper gets sick or if his wait is too long - but they think I’m strange. So please, Alex, just - just pay me the four pence and nothing more. And understand that if I’m being generous, it doesn’t come from some misguided charity: it comes from the goodwill of someone who’s really, really out of practice in making friends.”

Alex’s eyes, wide and bright, lock onto Maggie’s for a long moment until, with a soft  _ clink, _ her hand closes over the coin and returns to its purse. She looks down only when she has to, to watch her hand as it filters through the coins, and when it re-emerges it produces a threepenny coin and a penny alongside it.

Maggie’s shoulders drop, loosening a tension she didn’t know they’d held, and she smiles as she takes the money.

Wordlessly, Alex goes to her gig and steps up into the driver’s seat. As she gathers her reins, she looks down over her shoulder at Maggie.

“I’m not-” she tries, and fails, eyes worried. A deep breath, and: “I don’t know how to have friends, really.”

Maggie shrugs. “I don’t either.” 

That earns her a smile before Alex taps her gelding with the reins and urges him out into the road.

 

\--

 

Three days later, Maggie returns from a trip to market to find a small package resting at the foot of her horseshoeing stand.

She sits down at her bench and unties the string, the fabric unwrapping in her lap.

Six strawberries, red and shiny and only slightly bruised, smile up at her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think it’s brave to love when it would be easier not to.”

Maggie learns, from eavesdropping at the market, the story behind the Danvers family.

She learns how they were, outwardly, of good reputation for a long time, though the regulars at the pubs and gambling halls had known of Jeremiah Danvers’ love of high-stakes bets.

When Jeremiah died, only those regulars were unsurprised to learn that instead of inheriting a healthy sum to live on and oversee the working of their land, his family - a wife and two daughters - inherited a powerfully unhealthy debt. They’d had to relieve most of the men they’d hired to work the land, and, apparently, had taken to working it themselves, for the most part.

They’re tough women, people say. Strong women. Some people say the words with admiration, but more often, they’re said with derision.

Maggie just wonders if what it means to be a daughter is anything more than to suffer from the sins and cruelties of one’s father.

 

\--

 

To Maggie’s surprise and even greater delight, Alex begins to stop by from time to time, just to say hello. She comes in the afternoon, when it’s too hot to work her fields.

“Did you get the strawberries?” she asks, the first time.

Maggie grins and remembers that day: how she’d quickly wrapped the strawberries back up and snuck back into her house to eat them where nobody would see, where nobody would wonder how she’d ever acquired such a delicacy. She thought, for a moment, that she should savor them. Eat one now, perhaps, and another one at bedtime, and then two more the following day, and the day after that.

But she couldn’t help herself: she’d eaten them all, every delicious one, in one sitting.

“They were the best thing I’ve eaten in months,” Maggie replies.

Alex smiles. “Good. That’s what friends do, right? They give each other nice things to make each other happy?”

This warms Maggie, makes her smile, even more powerfully than the strawberries had done.

Sometimes Alex will run the bellows for Maggie, which, Maggie discovers, reduces the time of her work by a large margin.

“It’s so much faster when I don’t have to worry about the fire running cold,” she says.

Alex grins. “There’s something satisfying about it,” she says, ”pressing down on the handle here and watching the flames rise up over there.”

During quiet times, Maggie begins to teach her how to smith: how to temper iron with coke to make it stronger and lighter, how to hammer the sides of a horseshoe to tailor it to a particular horse’s foot.

By the ends of those days, Alex is almost as smoky and sooty as Maggie herself is. But she just laughs, and accepts an offer of a damp cloth to wipe herself off, unbothered by the streaks of black it still leaves behind on her skin.

“One day, I should come and help you work your fields, for all the help you’ve given me,” Maggie says, smiling.

But Alex’s face falls.

Maggie realizes, suddenly, that Alex has never talked about how she works the land by herself, without help from staff: she only knows it from the rumors.

Alex extends a hand, offering Maggie the dirty cloth to take back.

“I should go,” she says quietly, pushing her boyish-cut hair out of her face with her fingers.

“No, Alex, stay, I-”

“I have to go,” Alex says again, and then ducks out of the smithy into the hot afternoon sun.

 

\--

 

Maggie doesn’t see Alex again for a day, and another, and another. The days roll into weeks.

She’s walking to the baker when she sees Alex walk into Harper’s smithy; it inspires a welling of emotion in her, a surge of it, that she can’t understand.

“He’ll rob her blind,” she mutters to herself angrily, as though indignation is what she’s feeling.

She knows quite well that it’s not.

\--

 

She thinks that her connection to the Danvers family has run its course when, one day, a pretty blonde girl leads Gertrude into her smithy, wearing a dress that’s in much better repair than anything Alex ever wore.

“I know you’re Maggie Sawyer,” she says, instead of introduction. “I’m Kara Danvers. Alex Danvers’ sister.”

Maggie hums. “I thought you must be. I know Alex would never have sold Gertrude.”

The girl - Kara - smiles.

“She’s proud. Alex is.” Kara says it almost ruefully, scratching Gertrude’s nose.

Maggie doesn’t say anything: just fetches some shoe blanks and sets Gertrude’s foot in her stand, beginning to pry the old one off, while Kara holds the bridle.

“Her family adopted me, you know, after my mother died. My father had died some years before. They had been friends with the Danvers, and Alex’s father swore I would never want for anything. And then -- well. He died, and his debts surfaced, and we’ve struggled ever since. But she wants me to have everything: all the beautiful dresses, all the excellent food, all the easy life that her father promised my mother.”

“We’re all damned by the sins of our fathers,” Maggie mutters, barely audible over the clanging of her hammer.

Kara shrugs. “Maybe. Mine was all right, you know, until he got sick. And Jeremiah was kind. He just… had problems he was too proud to admit to anyone.”

The parallel: like father, like (elder) daughter, is too obvious to bother speaking.

Their conversation dissolves into the clanging of hammers, the huffing of the bellows, the hissing of iron cooling in the quenching barrel, until Maggie sets Gertrude’s final hoof on the ground.

“She was happier when she was visiting you,” Kara says. “It had been so long since I’d seen her happy. I love her as though we were blood, you know. I’d give anything to see that happiness again.”

Maggie shrugs. “I never asked her to stop coming. I never _wanted_ her to stop coming. I liked it when she spent time with me.”

“I know,” Kara says. “But she’s proud. She won’t admit she made a mistake by walking away from your friendship.”

Maggie runs a hand over her head, catching flyaway hairs and smearing a little soot into them without thinking. She’ll bathe well, later, she decides. She’ll take the time to heat the water and everything.

“What are you suggesting, Kara? That I should go find her at your home? Because it was offering to go there that made her walk away from me.”

Kara shrugs. “She goes to the market every Tuesday and Friday.”

 

\--

 

That Friday, Maggie closes her smithy in the afternoon and goes to the market.

She knows where Alex sets up her stand. She’s seen it before. As she approaches, Maggie can see her haggling with an old henwife over what looks to be a few pounds of potatoes.

“They’re worth the price,” Maggie says, with a smile, to the old woman. “Best spuds you’ve ever tasted.”

The woman looks at her, at her work trousers and the soot-stains that seem almost to be a part of her skin, and huffs in frustration. When she drops the coin in Alex’s hand and walks away with her potatoes, she seems to be driven by the desire to put distance between her and these two strange women as much as by the desire to purchase potatoes.

Maggie watches the old woman leave, and then turns to look at Alex. Alex looks back at her, inscrutably.

Maggie shrugs. “We could make a good team. Intimidate everyone out of haggling over prices.”

Alex shrugs and looks down, and then away. She stacks potatoes on her table.

(If her breath, on exhale, shakes a little, Maggie pretends not to notice.)

“I know a few things about falling from grace,” Maggie says quietly to Alex’s silence. “If you come and visit me again, I’ll tell you about it.”

Alex pauses in her stacking for just a moment.

Maggie smiles, in the hope that from the corner of her eye, Alex will see.

Then Maggie walks away.

 

\--

 

Two days later, as Maggie is scooping ash at the end of the day, she’s startled when someone clears their throat just behind her, and sends up a cloud of grey dust.

When she turns and looks at Alex, her hair and clothing are covered in it, and Maggie’s stomach drops to the soles of her feet.

“I’m -- I’m so sorry,” she says, setting the ash shovel back down, “I’m so sorry, I’ll just, let me-”

She’s so panicked, so frantic, because Alex has come back and Maggie has covered her in _ash_ before even saying _hello_ and now she’s looking for a clean cloth or a rag that she doesn’t even notice Alex’s face until Alex grabs her arm.

Alex is smiling. Almost laughing.

‘I didn’t know I scared you like that,” she says.

Maggie blushes, looks away, drops her searching hands to her sides. “You don’t _scare_ me, you just… caught me off guard.”

“I’m knee-deep in mud every day,” Alex says, smiling. “Sometimes worse than mud, depending on how the horses are feeling. A little ash won’t hurt me.”

“I know,” Maggie insists, “I know, but you - you just came back, you finally came back and I-”

Alex’s smile turns sad. “I’m sorry. For leaving. I panicked, I guess.”

And Maggie can only shake her head. “No, no, you’re fine, I just, I-” she sighs. “You can go in there and borrow some clean clothes from the chest,” she says, gesturing toward the door of her home. “Let me get you some clean water and I’ll be in there in a minute.”

Alex nods once and slips past Maggie, through the smithy and into Maggie’s small house.

Maggie runs around back, to fill a bucket from the well, and dashes inside.

Inside, where Alex has opened the wrong chest.

She’s opened the chest that Maggie never opens. That Maggie sometimes forgets she still owns: in her mind, it’s faded into the walls of the house.

_Stupid_ , Maggie thinks. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

It’s not a terrible outcome. It’s just not how Maggie would have ideally framed the story she’d been about to tell.

In the chest there are gowns. A half-dozen of them, folded neatly and stacked, in deep reds and purples and blues, rich green satins and bright yellow velvets, with trims of gemstones and lace.

Alex is hovering her fingers over the fabric, as though afraid to touch it.

“You can borrow one of those if you want,” Maggie says, “but I imagine you’ll be more comfortable in the clothing in this chest over here.” She pats the one near her bed.

Alex turns and looks at her. “I haven’t seen gowns like this in…” she trails off. “These are more beautiful than anything I owned, even when my father was still alive and we still lived like we were rich.”

Maggie nods and sets the bucket by the hearth to warm. “I told you I knew what it felt like to fall,” she says. “There’s a clean cloth in the basket by the washbasin to wipe yourself off. Take… whatever clothing is comfortable. I’ll just…” she gestures vaguely to the door. “The ash,” she says lamely, “and when I come back, I’ll explain.”

She dashes out before Alex can respond, before she can be made to say or do something that will have her stay in the room while Alex undresses.

She will tell Alex what happened. But Alex doesn’t know, yet, and so Alex doesn’t know that she should not undress in front of Maggie.

She takes her time sweeping the ash, and empties it into the dustbin to the side.

When she returns to the house, Alex is wearing a pair of her trousers and a light linen shirt, her face and hair wet from where she rinsed them, and she’s feeding another log onto the hearth fire.

Maggie goes to the table on the side and pours each of them an ale. Then she quietly begins to cut potatoes and meat into a pot.

“Hungry?” she asks Alex.

“Yes,” Alex says, so Maggie makes enough for two.

When the pot is warming over the fire, and the scent of food begins to fill the space, Maggie begins to speak.

“My father was a knight,” she says, and Alex gasps. “Still is, probably, actually. I don’t know. But that’s why I have the gowns.”

“A _knight_?” Alex echoes. “But you - how did -”

“My father caught me in a… compromising position… with the sister of his squire,” she says. For a long moment after that, she stares into the heart of the fire, listening for indications of Alex’s reactions. She hears nothing. _She must be frozen in revulsion_ , Maggie thinks, _or in fear. She thinks I’m going to attack her. She thinks I’m a demon, sent to earth to corrupt innocent women_.

But when, finally, she hazards a look over, she sees none of that. She sees intent, focused eyes, zeroed in on her.

“How did that turn you from the daughter of a knight into the only woman blacksmith I’ve ever heard of in my life?”

Maggie shrugs. “My father called me a devil, the presence of evil itself in this world, and disowned me. I had only a little time to pack, and all I owned, at the time, were gowns. I thought they might have some value, so I packed them. Turns out there’s not much value there. The stones are decorative, the fabric too little for me to sell, and the dresses themselves are too small for most women without heavy alteration.”

“They’re beautiful,” Alex says.

Over the stove, their supper sizzles. Maggie reaches forward with the tongs and shakes the pot to keep it from sticking.

“I walked the streets, desperate, living on charity, until I encountered a travelling blacksmith. Well, not so much travelling, I suppose, as looking for a place to set up his shop. He thought I was a boy, I think, when he offered me to be his apprentice. But when he found out I was a girl, he wasn’t scared off. Just asked me if I was sure I wanted to do it, wanted labor that was so hard and dirty. I said I wasn’t scared of a little soot. I followed him here, a long way from my home. And when he died, just a few years ago, I inherited the smithy.”

Maggie half-heartedly gestures around her, at the single room where she lives: the straw pallet where she sleeps, the bench by the hearth where she eats and rests, the basin where she washes herself and her clothing. “Not quite the castle I grew up in,” she says, “but at least this one’s mine, so I can’t be run out of it.”

A silence stretches between them. Maggie keeps her eyes intently focused on the patterns cast by the flames against the soot-stains on the back of the fireplace.

“And what happened to the squire’s sister?” Alex asks, after a moment.

“I don’t know. I never saw her again.” Maggie sighs. “I hope she met a squire of her own and married him. I hope she still lives comfortably in that castle.”

“You loved her,” Alex says quietly, and Maggie can only shrug a shoulder. Had she loved her? It was hard to know: she’d been so young. But she had desired her, fully and profoundly, had longed for the feeling of their bodies together in ways that she’d never longed for the touch of any boy.

Late at night, in moments of weakness, she can let herself feel that she longs for Alex in that same way that she’d longed for the daughter of the squire. But she longs for Alex’s companionship more than she longs for anything else. She longs for that fully enough, deeply enough, this first breach in her loneliness since the smith died, that she will endure and suppress the physical longing.

Alex will never know how Maggie feels.

But Maggie is braced. Alex is the first person she’s told about her past - about why she was cast out. Even the old blacksmith, she never told. And so Maggie braces herself, waiting to find out whether Alex will curse her, will try to fix her, will walk away and never come back but for good reason, this time.

“I think it’s a good thing, to care for someone,” is what Alex says, eventually, “for two people to care for each other.” Her voice is gentle, smoky, meeting the rasps and pops of the fire and the simmering food. “It’s brave to love someone, I think.”

“Is it? I gave in to my baser instincts, Alex. Isn’t that just cowardly and reckless?”

“I think it’s brave to love when it would be easier not to.”

Maggie can only huff out a sad laugh.

The food is cooked. Maggie leans over to pull it off the fire and set it on the hearthstone. From the bench alongside, she draws two plates (When did she last need two plates?) and serves them both.

It’s not fancy, the cheaper cuts of goat meat and potatoes, but it tastes all right, she thinks. Alex bites and chews pensively but easily, and Maggie is relieved that it didn’t turn out too tough or too bland.

“My sister is adopted,” Alex says, a few bites in. “I know you know. She told me she came to see you.”

Maggie nods.

“I want her to have everything. Every happiness. She’s so kind, and she’s lost so much, and she deserves the best the world can offer. I think of my father sometimes and I hate him for leaving us, for leaving _her_ , in this position. Because she should have finery, and what she has instead is old dresses of mine that are too short and that I’ve taken in through the hips, and fields she has to work herself, knee-deep in mud, with old horses who struggle to stay sound.”

Alex looks over, finally, and meets Maggie’s eyes, and Maggie, for all her fear and shame, finds she cannot look away.

“I know what shame feels like,” she says, “and I know what stupid, dangerous love can feel like, too, even if it’s a different kind of love. I’ll not be ashamed to be friends with you, Maggie Sawyer, if you’ll not be ashamed to be friends with me.”

Maggie swears her heart stutters in her chest, and when it starts again it pushes a flush of some new warmth through her whole body, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.

All she can do is smile.

 

\--

 

The very next day, Alex stops by in the late afternoon, smiles at Maggie, and offers to work the bellows.

 

\--

 

Alex comes by regularly after that. Sometimes she brings work, and Maggie only ever asks her for the cost of the metal - sometimes not even that. But Alex doesn’t fight her over “charity” anymore, because Alex brings her early spuds and late greens and, one brilliant day, _peaches_. They hide behind the smithy together and eat the peaches, sweet juice dripping down their chins, and they laugh like girls a quarter of their age.

(Maggie wants to wipe the juice from Alex’s chin with her thumb.)

(She digs her fingertips into the curve of her knee instead.)

 

\--

 

The sweet, excruciating tension breaks, eventually.

It does not break the way Maggie thinks it will.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and Maggie is lost. So, so lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Writing fanfiction tropes into a fluffy fairytale fic? 
> 
> More likely than you think!

It happens when an unexpected rainstorm blows in late on market day, sending the vendors packing and dashing for cover. The paths and roadways turn to mud under the onslaught, and soon there’s thunder, sending the horses spooking.

Maggie sighs and begins to tidy up: though her smithy is covered by a thick thatch roof, there’ll be no more work today.

She’s sweeping, shoveling ash and dust into the wastebin, when the sound of sucking mud and splashing water draws her attention, and Alex tugs Gertrude, who’s pulling her cart, under the cover of the smithy.

“Oh no, Alex,” Maggie says, setting her shovel down and rushing over, hands outstretched. Alex just blinks at her helplessly. She’s soaked: her hair, her shirt, her trousers all clinging to her, water dripping from her chin and her fingertips.

“Go inside,” Maggie hurries her. “Go go go. Get dry clothes. I’ll take care of Gertrude and meet you.”

Alex nods and goes.

Maggie hitches Gertrude to a beam and sets her up with a bucket of water and a bucket of oats from the feed bag she knows Alex keeps under the seat of her cart. She takes off Gertrude’s harness and finds a few sheets of burlap to throw over the old mare’s wet back.

It’s no substitute for a well-kept stable, but at least she’s fed and warm enough and out of the rain.

It’s not until she goes inside that she remembers that she hasn’t started her hearth fire yet. Alex is sitting in a pair of Maggie’s trousers and a jacket, her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering.

Cursing under her breath, Maggie ducks back outside and, with her tongs, grabs the still-smouldering half-log from her forge. With a little tinder and air, it will quickly burst into flame again.

“Coming through, coming through, coming through!” She exclaims as she dashes back indoors, and Alex scrambles quickly out of the way so that Maggie can drop the log into the hearth. Maggie feeds it tinder and air until the fire burns brightly, and then Alex inches closer and holds her hands, white with cold, toward the flames.

“Here,” Maggie says, tugging the quilt from the foot of her bed and draping it over Alex’s shoulders.

“Thanks,” Alex says, pulling it tight around her and scooting closer still to the fire. “This rain caught us all off guard. The wind changed this afternoon.”

Maggie hums and sets to work warming some water to drink and preparing some supper for them. When she’s warm enough, Alex stands and hangs her wet things on a hook on the wall, to help them dry, and then sits closer to the hearthstone, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

They eat, and chat, watching for the weather to change, but by the time the sky darkens, the rain has shown no signs of letting up. Maggie can hear it thudding on her roof, and she’s grateful for the work she put into re-thatching it earlier in the season, if only because, right now, it’s given Alex a dry place to sit and rest and warm up.

Her hair has begun to dry, curling and frizzing at the roots near the top of her head, and the sight of it, this imperfection, makes Maggie unaccountably warm.

“You might need to stay here tonight,” Maggie says. “I’d hate to send you back out into the rain in the dark.”

“Gertrude-”

“Is covered up. I can’t guarantee it’ll be the most comfortable night she’s ever spent, but she’ll be fine until the morning if she has to be.”

Alex glances up, to where the sound of the rain is coming from, and then looks at Maggie again. “Thank you.”

Maggie banks up the fire, and then pulls another blanket from her clothing-chest.

“You can have the bed,” Maggie says, “I’ll be fine on the floor near the hearth.” Most women would share the bed, she knows, but she also knows that she is strange, she’s not most women, and that Alex _knows_ that she is not most women.

But it’s Alex who says, “Don’t be silly. Your bed is big enough for both of us.”

And Maggie is weak, so weak. So she doesn’t fight. She lets Alex lay down on the side by the wall, and then she lays down on the side closer to the door.

It’s just a straw pallet with a sheet over it, and Maggie is self-conscious about all the ways it’s lumpy and scratchy, all the ways she needs to replace it, all the ways her sheets are stained gray from the soot and ash that she can never, it seems, wash all the way clean of her skin, all the ways she wants Alex to sleep on better surfaces than this.

But Alex just rolls to face her and smiles, conspiratorially. “It’s been a long time since I shared a bed. Not since Kara and I were children.”

Maggie imagines the bed they must have shared: it would have been down-filled, surely, with white sheets, and staff to turn down the blankets and then tuck them back in again.

“This must be different from that,” Maggie says.

Alex nods. And then she reaches forward and cups her hand over Maggie’s jaw, stroking her cheek with her thumb.

Maggie knows, then, what’s going to happen.

She knows, and she knows she should stop it. She knows she should smile, and put her hand over Alex’s, and squeeze it in affection, and then move it away.

She knows all of these things, but she’s too weak, to besotted, to do them.

“This is very different,” Alex says, tucking her head just a little closer to Maggie’s.

And oh, God, Maggie should move.

Maggie should pull away, should say that she’ll be fine on the floor by the fire.

Maggie should not, _should not_ tuck her head in closer, too.

But that’s what she does.

“Different,” Maggie echoes, again.

Who makes the final movement into the kiss? Maggie doesn’t know. It feels as though they just come together, Alex’s lips soft and warm and tasting a little of the beer they drank together while Alex was warming up and drying off. Alex’s fingers slip into Maggie’s hair, and Maggie’s hand clutches at the front of Alex’s shirt, and their bodies slide closer together.

And then Alex turns onto her back, and Maggie shifts up over her, and their bodies are touching now, through their clothes, the full length of them, and Maggie is lost.

So, so lost.

 

\--

 

Maggie awakens with the crowing of the rooster next door.

Alex is wrapped around her, her head resting in the crook between Maggie’s shoulder and breast, over the linen of her shirt, the quilt tucked warm around them.

The rain stopped sometime during the night, and Maggie knows this will be a good day for business. Nothing like a good rainfall to make the ground muddy and ripe for sucking at poorly-fitted horseshoes.

Alex’s kisses, the night before, had been curious, and undemanding, and Maggie assumes they cannot have been the first kisses she has ever shared. But kissing - well, and tugging a little at the hems of their shirts - is as far as things went. The kisses lasted long, though; long enough for Maggie to recover from the initial shock and enjoy not only the gentle, searching pleasure of Alex’s mouth, but also the simpler pleasure of being touched by another person, another body.

God, it’s been long, so long, since anyone has touched her in affection.

But now, in the morning, how will Alex react? Will she cast Maggie aside, threaten her, call her a demon who’d perverted her innocent heart?

Her own heart racing at the thought, Maggie slowly, carefully, begins to disentangle herself, trying to ease herself out of the bed without waking Alex.

But Alex does wake, of course: she, too, needs to rise with the rooster for her own work. And rise she does, first shifting a little against Maggie’s shoulder, and then rolling over, rolling away, and stretching.

When she turns and looks at Maggie, her eyes open wide in a combination of happiness and fear.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she says, touching Maggie’s cheek.

“I thought I might have,” Maggie says, relaxing a little into Alex’s hand. “Or a dream. A piece of my imagination.”

“You’re sweet, Maggie Sawyer,” is Alex’s reply, her eyes softening, too.

They don’t kiss again, in the morning. Alex hitches Gertrude back up while Maggie starts up the fire in the forge and then cuts them each a bit of bread and cheese to start the day.

Alex’s clothes have mostly dried through the night, but they’re stained with mud up to the knees. Maggie bundles them up carefully and hands them to Alex in the smithy.

“Oh,” Alex says, “just give me a moment and I’ll put those back on.”

But Maggie only shakes her head. “Just bring me back the clothes you’re wearing, when you can. You’ll need to wash these.”

Alex smiles.

When Alex has backed Gertrude and the cart out of the smithy, Maggie follows her out and stands at her feet. They grey dawn is paling into full sunlight, and Maggie knows that Alex is losing precious time to work in the cool.

“Will I… _see_ you again?” Maggie asks, hoping that Alex will understand the true question. “I liked… _seeing_ you, last night. And this morning.”

Alex smiles and tilts her head back, combing her fingers through her short hair, pushing it out of her face.

Maggie remembers the feeling of the soft skin of Alex’s throat under her lips.

“I hope so,” Alex says. “I would imagine so.”

 

\--

 

Maggie doesn’t see Alex again that day, or the day after that, or the day after that.

But the day after _that_ , when Alex comes to her at the end of the day, she is visibly, thoroughly distraught.

She’s come on Gertrude’s back, without her cart, and Maggie is taken, not for the first time, by the way she rides astride and not aside. But her agitation is clear in the tension in her shoulders and hands, and the way the horse drops her large head to nuzzle her, as if to soothe Alex the way Alex soothes her when she gets a new shoe.

“Here,” Maggie says instead of _hello_ , holding out her hands to take the reins and urge both horse and woman into the smithy. She hitches Gertrude, loosening the girth and providing a bucket of clean water, while Alex paces, tugging at her own hair.

“Come,” Maggie says, ushering Alex into her home and settling her on a stool while she starts up the fire again. Alex sits and waits, still tense, unspeaking.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asks, when the fire is crackling. She reaches for Alex’s hands, but Alex pulls them away.

“The Lord Olsen invited my family to the harvest ball.” Alex says.

Maggie furrows her brow. This doesn’t seem cause for distress. “Yes,” she says.

“We knew one another as children,” Alex says. “His family was always the greater nobility, of course, but our fathers were friendly before they died. We’ve known one another a long time.”

If anything, this seems like it should be even _less_ cause for distress.

“He named me _first_ , Maggie. In the invitation. He invited all of us - my sister, my mother, and me - but he named me first. Not my mother. Me.”

 _Oh_.

Well, that’s something.

That implies an… interest.

Maggie swallows a pressure in her throat, wills her heart to settle before it begins to race.

“Is that a bad thing?” Maggie asks.

“Maggie, this could fix _everything_ . He’s a good, kind man. He’s always been kind. He knows about our family’s debt - he _has_ to, because everyone does, in those circles. They don’t invite us to things anymore. But he’s expressed an interest anyway. This could restore my family, Maggie, it could help me give Kara the life she deserves, it could mean that my mother wouldn’t have to labor in the heat, she could rest.”

Alex is right, of course.

And if, when she marries a lord, she can no longer be seen in the company of a strange, poor, peasant blacksmith, well. That’s all that can be expected, isn’t it?

“This all sounds wonderful,” Maggie says, trying to force happiness into her voice. Because the tragedy of it is: she wants the best for Alex. She wants Alex to recover her standing, to provide for her sister, to have all the comfort and leisure that she deserves. “Why are you upset? This sounds like the best thing that could happen to you.”

Alex nods frantically. “It - it is,” she says. “It’s the most perfect of all possible outcomes. But I can’t - I can’t go to the ball, Maggie. I don’t have a gown for it, we sold the good carriage ages ago, we had to let the footman go. This could fix everything, Maggie, it could, but I can’t -”

Maggie swallows.

“When is the ball?”

Alex sighs. “Fourteen days from yesterday.”

Maggie nods and then squares her shoulders. “I’ve met your sister. Is your mother much larger than either of you?”

Alex shakes her head. “She’s about my size.”

“Take my gowns, then,” Maggie says. “Take three of them. You’ll need to alter them a bit, especially for your sister - she’s so _tall_ \- but you’ll be able to make them work.”

Alex blinks at her, eyes wet. “That’s kind of you, Maggie, but even with the gowns, I don’t have a carriage or staff, we can’t show up there in a farm cart -”

Maggie reaches forward and hazards a touch to Alex’s knee with the tips of three fingers. “Leave it to me,” she says, swallowing her own sadness. “Bring me your cart tomorrow and leave it with me. And on the morning of the ball, I’ll send for Gertrude, so be sure to send her to me. It will all be managed. You’ll see.”

Alex blinks at her. “I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“Trust me,” Maggie murmurs. “Just trust me.”

Alex stares at her for a long, dragging moment, eyes wide and earnest, before nodding.

They pick three gowns from Maggie’s chest and fold them carefully into Gertrude’s saddlebags.

In the morning, Alex brings the cart. At Maggie’s request, she leaves the harness, too, and rides back home on Gertrude’s broad back, without a saddle.

(If Maggie remembers the warmth of Alex’s leg under her hands, the strength of it, as she’d helped to heft her up onto the horse’s back, well. A memory is all that it is.)

 

\--

 

Maggie all but closes her smithy for thirteen days.

She spares no expense, tempering lengths of iron with coke and forming them into a carriage frame. She sands down the wood base of the cart and stains it dark with layer upon layer of soot solution. She re-forms its bearings and axles until they roll smooth and straight, and then polishes them until they gleam

She goes into her chest of gowns and pulls out every one that remains.

Their skirts are made of yards upon yards of fabric, their bodices bejeweled, and Maggie takes a knife to all of them, stretching beautiful lengths over the frame she’s built on the cart, and then fixing jewels on them in beautiful patterns wherever she can reach.

She cleans and cleans and cleans her clothes, soaking the whites in ammonia until they gleam, and then polishes her workboots until she can see her reflection in their calves.

She uses the black satin underlayer of one of the gowns to fashion a men’s-style waistcoat that fits her perfectly if she straps her breasts tight to her chest.

She oils and polishes every inch of Gertrude’s harness.

She convinces the milliner to lend her a tricorn hat in exchange for a year’s worth of sewing needles.

On the day of the ball, she pays a neighbor boy two farthings to go to the Danvers home and fetch Gertrude. When he brings her back, she sets to work grooming her until she gleams, braiding her tail to hide its thinness and braiding her mane down the length of her neck and blacking her hooves with a paste of ash and oil. When the old mare stomps and shakes her head, Maggie is convinced that she’s preening, as if to say, _look at how beautiful I am. Look at how beautiful you’ve made me._

That evening, Maggie binds her breasts and dresses in her perfectly white trousers and shirt, in the shiny black waistcoat and the polished black boots, she combs and braids her hair and settles the hat over it.

In her small looking-glass in the corner, she barely recognizes herself, looking every inch the young footman she’ll perform for the evening.

And then she climbs to the front of the cart-turned carriage, in front of the green-and-yellow dome she’s crafted from the velvets and sateens of her old gowns, the purple velour cushions she’s made from the fabric of another gown stuffed with the straw of her bedding, and urges Gertrude down the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were worried: Alex will not marry James in this fic. I wouldn't do that to either of them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 is new, 25 March 2018.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ADDED 25 MARCH 2018
> 
> I was rereading this fic here on ao3 today and discovered that I SKIPPED OVER THIS SCENE WHEN I POSTED THIS FIC. It was an accident. It was supposed to be in there.
> 
> So, 6 months later, I'm adding this little mini-chapter between the original chapters 3 and 4.
> 
> Shoulda hadda beta.

The old manor, when she gets there, is worn on the outside, its paint chipping. Maggie knows there’ll be nobody to escort the Danvers women up to the carriage, so she stands Gertrude and goes down the walkway herself, presenting herself at the door. 

The three are standing in the foyer when it opens.

Alex’s mother is a beautiful woman, with a soft face and strong posture and hard-working hands and proud eyes. 

Maggie has seen Kara before, of course, but to see her now, wearing Maggie’s old gown of purple and black, its hem lowered and its sides let out with such skill that only Maggie herself would notice: she is a vision.

And Alex.

Oh, Alex.

Her hair has been pinned up artfully on the back of her head, no doubt to conceal how short she keeps it. She wears Maggie’s red gown and Maggie can no longer imagine what it must have looked like when she wore it herself, because on Alex it is so beautiful. Alex, whose elbow-length gloves conceal the way her work has marked her hands and arms. Alex, whose throat is bared by the dress’s low collar, and Maggie can’t help but feel warm as she remembers the way that throat had moved, had leapt and shuddered, under her touch, under her lips.

She can’t bring herself to comment on how beautiful they all look.

Instead, she offers her arm to Mrs. Danvers.

“Your carriage awaits, my ladies,” she says.

(She doesn’t let herself notice the way Kara tugs at Alex’s elbow, the way she whispers in her ear.)

(She doesn’t let herself notice the wide, surprised eyes that Alex lays on her in her home-made uniform.)

(When they step out the door, Mrs. Danvers’ hand on her folded arm, the sisters’ walking arm-in-arm behind them, she doesn’t let herself focus on the surprised gasp that Alex emits upon sight of the carriage and the transformation of the old workhorse.)

She offers her hand to the women in turn, helping them up: first Mrs. Danvers, and then Kara. 

When Alex settles her gloved hand into Maggie’s, Maggie cannot help but notice the way her eyes settle on hers, the way they gleam.

“You’re a worker of miracles,” Alex says, so very quietly.

“I’d move heaven for your happiness, Alex,” Maggie replies, equally quietly. 

It’s the closest she’ll let herself come to admitting, aloud, how she feels.

She fastens the door behind them, and then climbs up into the front of the carriage.

When she urges Gertrude back onto the road, she swears the old mare steps higher, arcs her neck more prettily, than she’s ever seen before.


	5. Chapter 5

The carriage gleams and glistens under the torchlights that light the road up to the Olsen castle. They approach slowly in the queue, and as they get close, Maggie hears the footmen announce the arriving nobility.

As she drives up to the foot of the stairs, nobody seems to notice that the carriage is home-made, and she smiles a little, inwardly, at her success.

She halts Gertrude, who swishes her tail once and stands perfectly square, and then she steps down as regally and carefully as she can.

Alex was invited first, and so Alex should be announced first.

Maggie opens the door and offers her hand. Alex takes it, and as she steps down, Maggie drops her voice as low as she can, and projects as loud as she can, “Miss Alexandra Danvers.”

(Up at the top of the stairs, a butler rushes inside. By the time Alex has climbed halfway up the stairs, the Lord Olsen has emerged at the top, smiling broadly, and offering Alex his arm as she approaches.)

(His face is kind. His smile seems genuine. Maggie wants to hate him on sight, but finds that she can’t.)

She announces Kara next. Kara’s eyes flit up to the top of the stairs, where Alex and the Lord Olsen are speaking. When she looks over at Maggie, they’re full of something that might be sympathy.

She announces the Lady Danvers last, who looks at her, and smiles, and says, “you can’t possibly know what you’ve given her. What you’ve given us.”

Maggie can only feel what she’s given up.

But if it means Alex’s happiness… well. 

That’ll be enough.

She watches the women all disappear into the foyer, into the warm candlelight. Then she climbs back up and gives Gertrude a little tap with the reins to urge her back down the road, toward the stables and the hitching area where grooms are brushing road-dirt from horses’ legs and hovering near an open fire to chat and drink from a casket of ale provided for them.

Maggie can’t speak with them, of course. If she does, she’ll reveal herself to be a woman, and that won’t do.

And as she remembers the sight of the Lord Olsen smiling at Alex, offering her his arm and escorting her into the dance, she finds she wants to be alone.

So she leaves Gertrude and the carriage in the hands of the Olsen grooms and begins to walk home. She has hours before she’ll need to pick them up. She’ll have something to eat and drink, she thinks, and sweep some of the ash that she’s allowed to build up under her forge while she’s been working on the carriage, and she’ll contemplate what she’ll put into the now-empty chest that used to contain all her old gowns.

She changes out of her footman’s costume before sweeping, though. It’ll need to stay clean, of course. And if she gets a little ash on her skin between now and then, well, by the time she goes back to the castle, it’ll be quite dark and the nobles will all be drunk, so they probably won’t notice.

She listens to the crickets, the hooting of owls and the calls of night-birds. From time to time, a shift in the breeze carries the sounds of the party to her, over the hills.

The moon is full, and the night is clear, and the time slides along, the future into the present into the past.

Maggie has swept up the ash, and drunk a little ale, and eaten a little cheese, and still has no idea what she’ll put in her empty chest.

But it’s time to change back into her costume and start her walk back. 

Maggie is halfway re-dressed when she hears the sound of something thundering: the baker’s horse, she thinks, in its pasture just down the way, probably spooked by an owl or a fox.

But no: it doesn’t stop. It’s coming closer, and getting louder, and the closer it gets the clearer the sound of the hoof-falls. They’re too clear, too resonant, to be in a grassy pasture: they’re on the road.

And then, quite suddenly and quite nearby, they stop.

“Maggie!” a voice yells. “Maggie Sawyer!”

What on earth is  _ she _ -

Hurriedly, her white shirt buttoned just enough to keep her decent and her waistcoat left waiting on her bed, Maggie opens the door and runs back outside.

Alex stands there, by Gertrude’s head, holding the long carriage reins but without the carriage, her hair looking a little disheveled and windswept, her gloves removed and tucked into her collar.

“Alex,” Maggie gasps, “is everything okay? I was just going to come back for you, I didn’t think you’d be ready--”

But Alex just shakes her head and stands there, looking at her. 

“Alex?” Maggie asks again.

And Alex blinks, her mouth working soundlessly, looking for all her life as though she were rooted to the spot.

Gertrude drops her head and nudges Alex so that she stumbles forward.

“Maggie,” Alex says.

Maggie takes a step closer, worried that Alex might bolt, like a frightened animal. “Yes, Alex?” 

“I was there,” Alex begins slowly, “I was at the ball, and I was dancing with the host, and he was so kind and handsome and pleasant, and yet…”

Maggie inhales. “And yet?”

“And yet I couldn’t stop thinking…” Alex swallows. “Why did you do all this for me, Maggie?” She gestures at her own red gown, at Gertrude’s polished hooves, at Maggie’s half-reassembled footman’s garb.

Maggie inhales sharply. What can she say? Because it could help you find happiness? Because I only want what’s best for you? Because you’re perfect, and wonderful, and because I-

“I think you know why,” Maggie breathes quietly, frozen in place.

Alex swallows again and glances away, and then looks back. “Will you say it?” she asks.

Maggie’s heart begins to race, her breath tightening into panting, and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she gasps, “there’s something wrong with me, Alex, to feel like this, I can’t-”

“Can it be wrong to love?” Alex asks. She drops Gertrude’s reins and they land on the dirt floor with a quiet scuffing sound. Then she takes a step forward, and another.

What can Maggie say? Of course it can be wrong to love. Of  _ course _ it can: if it couldn’t, she wouldn’t have been cast out when she was barely more than a child, would she? “Alex,” she breathes, her voice cracking, her head shaking  _ no, no, no _ .

“You love me,” Alex says, taking another step closer, and she says it softly, but Maggie hears it as an accusation. She hunches her shoulders up, crosses her arms over her chest as if that might keep her heart from breaking apart.

“You love me enough to give me up,” Alex continues. “You love me enough to give up everything of value that you own - your gowns, your metal, your labor, everything - for me.”

Maggie’s heart screams  _ yes _ , because it’s true. Maggie’s heart screams  _ no _ , because what will it mean, if Alex knows  _ that _ about her.

“You love me enough to do all those things for me and expect nothing at all in return.” Alex takes the final step, closing the distance between them, and sets her hands on the outsides of Maggie’s shoulders, then sets her hands on the curve of Maggie’s jaw, tilting her head up, tilting her eyes to meet Alex’s eyes.

“You love me, don’t you,” Alex says again, gently. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, when we… I thought it was fun, for you. A physical comfort. I thought I was… But no: you love me.”

And like this, with her eyes locked on Alex’s eyes, Maggie finds she can’t contain it anymore. “Yes,” Maggie breathes, feeling tears building in her eyes, “I do. I tried to stop, I - forgive me, Alex, I can’t figure out how to stop.” She’s babbling now, just making sounds to delay hearing Alex’s response. “Forgive me, Alex, I love you, and I can’t make it stop. I love you. I love you-”

Finally Alex stops her with a finger over her lips.

Maggie feels herself a mess. At some point, she started crying. She hates to think of what’s on Alex’s finger from the effects of her blubbering.

“Why should I forgive you?” Alex murmurs.

Maggie’s heart breaks anew, but the finger over her lips keeps her silent.

“Why would I want you to stop?”

_ God _ , Maggie thinks,  _ isn’t that obvious _ ?

“Why would I want you to stop, only to leave me alone in this?”

And now Maggie is puzzled, because of course she wouldn’t leave Alex alone in anything if Alex didn’t want to be left. But-

“I love you too,” Alex says, so very softly.

Gertrude huffs a satisfied sound.

And Maggie freezes.

Surely she didn’t hear that. She couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.

“I love you,” Alex repeats.

Maggie stands there, frozen, until Alex moves her finger, tips her head and brings their lips together.

Maggie stays frozen while she feels the press, the warmth of it, and stays frozen for another moment still, until she feels Alex’s lips move gently, persistent against hers, and that thaws her from the press of their lips to her toes. She surges forward, puts her hands on the waist of the gown that used to be hers, the gown that looks so much more beautiful on Alex than it had ever looked on Maggie, and kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her.

When they stop, breathlessly, and rest their foreheads together, Maggie says, “This is all I have. This smithy, that home. I can’t make your sister more comfortable or save your mother from labor. But what I have is yours, and theirs, if you want it. If you’ll have it.”

Alex smiles, and sighs, and steps even closer to Maggie, drops her head down to the crook of Maggie’s neck.

“They convinced me to come for you,” Alex murmured. “The Lord Olsen is a good man, and he was  _ interested _ in me. And I thought, he deserves better than this. He deserves to have the heart of someone who hasn’t already given it away.”

Maggie shudders. “You have mine,” she murmurs against Alex’s ear.

Alex nods. “And I know it’s been broken before. I’ll treasure it.”

Maggie can’t help it. She sobs once more, turning her face into Alex’s neck, pressing her lips there.

They hold each other for a long time.

 

\--

 

It’s not until the next morning that either of them, Maggie or Alex, waking up together in Maggie’s bed - in  _ their _ bed - thinks to wonder how Alex’s mother and sister got home from the ball.

“Oh  _ no _ ,” Maggie gasps, mortified, but Alex only laughs, and kisses Maggie’s cheek, and says, “I’m sure they worked something out.”

Alex mounts Gertrude again, bareback and wearing more of Maggie’s borrowed clothing, and sets off toward the Danvers manor when Maggie opens her smithy for the day.

Later that night, when Alex comes back, Maggie learns that the Lord Olsen himself had had one of his horses hitched up to the Danvers carriage and had escorted them home.

He’d struck up a conversation in the carriage with Kara, and it had drawn on so long that they’d stayed parked outside the Danvers home for a long time, until the sky began to lighten again. He and Alex had known one another as children, but Kara, who’d been with her first family then, had never met him before that night.

Kara had told him, in only the broadest of strokes, where Alex had gone, and he’d been understanding.

“I’d hate to interfere with matters of the heart,” he’d said.

He’d left the carriage, eventually, and ridden his horse back home.

Kara’s face had glowed when Alex even mentioned his name. And when, that afternoon, a messenger had delivered another invitation up to the castle, it had been Kara, and not Alex, to whom it had been addressed.

 

\--

 

Alex divides her time as best she can between Maggie’s smithy and her own family’s land, but she sleeps every night in the bed in Maggie’s home. In  _ their _ home. In  _ their _ bed.

The mere thought of it makes Maggie’s heart soar.

And when the formal invitation comes for Kara’s wedding to the Lord Olsen, it is addressed to Miss Alexandra Danvers and Miss Margaret Sawyer, together.

Kara moves to the castle, then, and so does Alex’s mother, and Alex moves fully into the home she shares with Maggie, beside the smithy. Maggie makes clear to her that she does not want to stop working, and Alex smiles, and kisses her, and agrees.

The old gelding goes with Kara, but Alex brings Gertrude to live with them. 

Olsen pays the Danvers’ inherited debts to area merchants, and scares off the loan-sharks and gambling hounds from trying to collect on theirs. 

Maggie is grateful that Alex never suggests that they move into the now-empty Danvers manor, or that they stop working and live on Olsen’s wealth The smithy will always be hers, even if it’s also theirs, and there is a safety to keeping it and living there, rather than moving to Alex’s inherited land and depending on her continued goodwill to be able to stay there.

It’s not easy for Alex and Maggie to live at the smithy. Maggie continues to teach Alex her craft, and it’s helpful to have someone to help clean and run the bellows, but business doesn’t improve much over when she’d been alone, and it had never been profitable enough to support even just Maggie with great comfort, let alone both of them together.

They’re still a pair of strange women laboring in a man’s field.

Alex continues to work her family’s land, too. She accepts Olsen’s offer to hire workers to help her, in part to ensure that her mother and sister don’t feel compelled to help her anymore. She hires back several of the men and women she’d had to let go after her father’s death. But as the threat of winter looms, they know that they’ll lose that second income through the dark months.

Maggie wonders, often, whether Alex regrets her decision. But Alex never suggests that, never even hints at it, and Maggie can’t bring herself to ask.

One morning, while Alex is gone to work her land, Maggie fashions a small ring out of brass, bending and molding it until it’s perfectly smooth inside, and then hammering it for a little texture, and polishing it to a shine.

Alex’s eyes glow when she receives it.

Maggie intends it as a little gift, a token of her affection, to be worn perhaps on the right hand or on a string around the neck, but Alex slips it onto the ring finger of her left hand as though that’s where it belongs.

It fits perfectly and the sight of it makes Maggie’s breath shudder. She thinks idly that her chest may have become so over-full with love that there’s no longer any space in it for air.

“You have to keep teaching me,” Alex says, “so that I can learn to make one for you.”

It’s not long after Kara’s wedding that a carriage -  _ her _ carriage, the one that Maggie had built - draws up by the smithy, pulled by a fine dapple-grey horse.

(Gertrude, from her place in the pasture Maggie and Alex had fenced off for her behind the house, snuffles at it indignantly.)

The Lord Olsen steps down, followed by Kara.

Maggie, unsure of what brings them here, bows nervously. Beside her, Alex only smiles.

“How are my sister and brother-in-law?” she asks.

Kara grins. “We’re well.”

“Very well,” the Lord Olsen agrees, “except that we have need for a blacksmith.”

Maggie furrows her brow. “Has something gone wrong with the carriage? I can fix it-”

“No, no, the carriage is fine,” Olsen says. “That’s what’s impressed me. My staff take things to Harper to be fixed, but they always break again. This carriage is incredibly well-built - and all from what you had on hand!”

Maggie can’t help but preen a little: she did, after all, nearly rebuild the whole thing herself.

“You know you don’t need to work,” he says. “We’re all family now. I’d be happy to make sure you wanted for nothing, ever again.”

Maggie opens her mouth to politely decline, but he continues unfazed:

“But I know that’s not what you want.”

Maggie relaxes in relief.

“So I’ll tell you that what I want,” Olsen continues, “is a blacksmith for my land and properties, to keep things in good repair. I want you. The both of you. You can keep your home here, if you want to, and keep taking customers from the town, but I’ll pay you a comfortable salary to handle all of my work as high-priority.”

“There’s so much to do,” Kara moans. “The whole castle is full of loose hinges, cracked silverware, there’s a giant pile of broken farm equipment in the storage area outside… I told him he needs to stop throwing money at Harper for lazy work and retain you to do things properly.”

Olsen grins at Kara, clearly besotted, and then shrugs at Maggie. “She’s right,” he says.

Maggie looks over at Alex.

Alex cocks an eyebrow and shrugs.

Maggie looks back at Olsen and smiles. “When do we start?”

Olsen shrugs. “Tomorrow?”

And so tomorrow, they start.

The day after, they continue. 

And the day after that, and the day after that.

And they live happily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D'awwwwwwww so much sweetness!
> 
> So much love and support for everyone out there feeling heartbroken and lost. Losing a really good TV ship really is like heartbreak after a break-up: it's this brutal combination of regret for having invested so much emotionally in something that's over, fear of loneliness, a general sense of invalidation and inadequacy, and disorientation because one of your pillars, your cardinal points, is out of your life. I'm old enough to have been through that ringer more than once, both re. ships and re. breakups.
> 
> And people who say "it's only a TV show" have probably never been through the experience of trying to understand themselves as and not-straight. They don't know the comfort that comes from finally finding a mirror that _works_ when you've spent so long wondering why the ones everyone else loves seem to give you a distorted reflection.
> 
> So it's real, but so are you. And you're tougher than your heartbreak. And if you think your heartbreak is tougher than you are, if you think it's going to overwhelm you: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/get-help-now
> 
> You're all beautiful. <3


End file.
